No new COVID-19 cases in China for 1st time

Beijing, May 23 : China did not register any new confirmed COVID-19 cases for the first time since the pandemic began and detected only two suspicious cases, the countrys National Health Commission reported on Saturday.

Since May 11, the new daily confirmed cases in China, where the pandemic originated last December, have remained below 10 but until Saturday they had never managed to reach zero, reports Efe news.

The two suspected cases detected Friday - one locally in the city of Shanghai and the other from abroad in the north-eastern province of Jilin, on the border with Russia and North Korea - did not rise to confirmed status, according to the Commission.

The previous day, four new cases had been counted, two of them also in Jilin, where in the last few weeks more than 30 infected people have been detected related to Chinese nationals returning to their country from Russia.

In the last 24 hours, no new death has occurred either, three patients were discharged and 252 contacts close to those infected were no longer observed.

The total number of active cases from abroad amounts to 41, two of them in serious condition.

The total number of active cases in China stands at 79, nine of them serious, and that of confirmed cases since the start of the pandemic rises to 82,971, with 4,634 deaths.

In the last day, 28 asymptomatic cases were detected (compared to 35 the previous day), two of them imported, although none of them happened Friday to be considered as a confirmed case.

Asymptomatic patients under observation rise to 370, 26 of them from abroad.

In Hong Kong, 32 active cases remain among the 1,065 total cases detected in the former British colony, of which four have died, while in Taiwan there are 26 active cases, 441 and seven deaths recorded on the island since the start of the pandemic.

Since March, China has registered a considerable drop in the transmission of new cases of the virus at the local level, after drastic measures to prevent and limit movements helped control the pandemic in many parts of the country.

However, at the same time it has seen the new cases "imported" from abroad grow, the vast majority of them related to Chinese who return from other countries severely affected by the virus.

In recent weeks, northeast Chinese provinces bordering Russia, such as Jilin and Heilongliang, have witnessed a significant increase in the number of "imported" cases, which has led to the imposition of strict movement limitation measures in cities in that area.